the gravedigger knows my name
by hallowedhalls
Summary: Nico isn't the same boy she left behind anymore.  ::For Bianca, courtesy of the Verita Christmas Fic Exchange.::


_Holy shit, I've actually written something. _ Even though it completely sucks._

_So this is my first foray into PJO with canon characters, someone should shoot me now so I never write again. ;_; Anyways, I do not own PJO, which you should know, and hopefully this does not completely suck I'M SORRY BIANCA. This is my fic for the Verita Christmas Fic Exchange that Rach put together, love you bb, and she also beta'd this for me because she's awesome like that._

* * *

><p><strong>the gravedigger knows my name<strong>  
><em>:: for b, the most flawless bitch in the world. ::<em>

* * *

><p>See, the thing is, Nico isn't very good at running. Of course, it's never really been his fault – he's only ten, after all. New York isn't a nice place in the best of circumstances, and for a preteen boy, even if he looks older than he already is, it's one of the worst.<p>

He won't make it long here, and he knows it. So when he hears a thrumming, feels it resonate through his being, he follows it to Central Park. It's the middle of the day when he finally reaches it, but the doors swing open at his outstretched hand, and he lets them swallow him up.

Naturally, the mortals never notice a thing.

* * *

><p>The doors dump him in the Underworld, naturally. He sits up and finds himself outside a towering white building – <em>the Judgement Pavilion,<em> a voice whispers in his head. It's big and bold and hard to miss, and he feels his head swim as he tries to take in everything at the same time, desperately trying to wrap his mind around it.

His eyes are big with awe, fascination without even a hint of the dull pounding of fear. He should be afraid, he thinks dimly and distantly. He should be, but he's not. The shadows and murky rivers and the severe, exact lines of the buildings fill him with comfort, not terror. Even though he can hear the echoes of the shrieks of the guilty in Fields of Punishment, it doesn't feel like being on the outskirts of hell. Oddly enough, it feels like coming home.

"Because you are," a deep voice rumbles off in the distance. Nico looks up into the old, terrible – but still human – face of a man with a thick, unadorned crown on his head. _Minos_, the cacophony of voices murmurs into his ear. "Welcome, son of Hades." His face is just as stern as it was when he first appeared, his voice steely and deep, and Nico suddenly feels about the size of a mouse on the floor, gazing up at him with wide eyes.

"Son of – son of who?" he squeaks out, his voice shaking a little.

The man cocks his head to the side, regarding Nico like he's a particularly intriguing piece of pond scum. "You don't know?" he asks, and a corner of his lip twitches up. "No, you don't. You really _don't_ know, do you?"

All of the sudden, Nico's being pulled to his feet, and lead along the edge of a wall made from pillars of black walls – _the Walls of Erebus_ – and he stumbles along, tripping over the hems of his too-long jeans and dirty, frayed laces of his ratty old sneakers.

"Come along, son of Hades," Minos says, ignoring Nico's half-hearted protest of _it's Nico._ "I have so much to teach you about your gifts."

* * *

><p>It's mid-December when he emerges out of the Door of Orpheus into Central Park, exactly the same as he started, except his hair is shaggier and there are a few more shadows under his eyes. He'd make himself a portal right out of the Underworld, but right now, that takes a lot of energy out of him, and he kind of needs all the power he can get right now.<p>

It takes him all of five minutes to find a McDonald's. Apparently, the dead really like McDonald's. Go figure. It probably has something to do with the fact that all the calories and fat can't affect them any more – all they get is the taste, which seems to be like crack. Personally, Nico thinks it's too greasy and kind of really gross.

He makes his way to the graveyard. The location doesn't matter, Minos had told him, but he always felt more comfortable using graveyard dirt anyways. He finds a relatively fresh grave and digs it up with his bare hands. Dirt gets under his ragged fingernails and stains the white a brown-grey-black color, but he doesn't really care. He places the slightly squishy burger, still wrapped, in the ground and covers it with the dirt once again.

Biting his lip, he does his best to clear his mind. "Bianca di Angelo," he says, voice wobbly. He clenches his eyes shut and pictures her in his head, does his best to recall every detail. His body starts to tremble, almost violently, and he does his best to brace his legs so they stay standing. The faintest drops of sweat start to bead on his forehead, even as chilly as it is.

"Bianca di Angelo," he calls, louder this time with a voice twice as shaky. Pressure builds up in his head until it pops in his ears, and he cracks his eyes open.

Bianca is standing there, silvery like she was the night she left, but washed out in a sort of way, all pale except for her eyes, which were as dark as ever. He feels like collapsing to the ground in exhaustion. "Bianca!" he cries, voice hoarse. As he gets nearer to her, she flickers out briefly before coming back, and does so a few more time. He reaches a spot right in front of her and puts his hands on his knees, panting for breath. "Bianca," he says again, quieter but just as desperate.

There is no reply. He looks up, and she isn't even looking at him – just at a fixed point over his shoulder. She doesn't say a word. Then she flickers once again, twice, and then she disappears. He's left staring at the spot where she used to be.

_No. This isn't fair_, he thinks despairingly, before pulling out a carton of nuggets from the McDonald's bag. He digs another hole, and buries the food just the same as he did before.

"Bianca," he says, body thrumming with strained, thin-spread energy. "Bianca di Angelo." The stars gleam in the sky, bushes rustle with small animals, and crickets chirp in the cold night, but nothing happens.

He spends the rest of the night burying various pieces of food, calling her name until his knees give out on him and he collapses in exhaustion.

Nobody appears.

* * *

><p>The next morning, he wakes up to the cold of snowflakes landing then melting on his neck at sunrise. It's the beginning of a light snowfall, but it promises to become heavier, so he just grabs the empty bag and tosses it into a basket on the way out, before making his way into the city.<p>

Even though the sun is just beginning to rise, it's nearly ten in the morning, and people are out and about. The streets are busy and shops are open and he considers going through his pocket for some money, but decides against it.

It's a weird feeling, being empty. Up until now, he had a goal – master his powers. Find Bianca. Talk to Bianca. Hug Bianca. Talk to Bianca some more.

Bianca, Bianca, Bianca, Bianca, Bianca. Everything hinged on Bianca.

Now he's found her, but she doesn't want to talk to him. She doesn't even want to look at him.

He stands against a brick building and stares across the street. The rising light is bright and bold, a stark contrast to the black blocks of shadows where all the skyscrapers are. And he thinks about what he's going to do next. Because he doesn't want to do anything right now. He just wants to curl up on a couch or in a bed and sleep, pretend these last six months were nothing more than a horrific nightmare, but he can't even do that.

Everything he wants is so far out of his reach they might as well be in another dimension.

He wants… he doesn't even know what he wants, anymore. Because he's got nothing now. Not a life, not a family. Not even a sister.

Like he said. Nothing.

* * *

><p>He tries summoning her again, of course. How could he not? It's <em>Bianca<em>, and he's… he's lonely. But each time he does, she doesn't speak – lately, she's taken to looking at him with her big brown eyes, staring at him solemnly, but that's about it – and she flickers out within minutes of her summoning.

So he's moved on to summoning other ghosts. Because he's lonely, okay? And the ghosts are the only ones who seem to tolerate them. And even that's probably because he's the Lord of the Dead's only child.

He's not bitter about this. Really, he's not.

But he feels so old right now, older than most eleven year olds, and when he looks in the mirror, he doesn't think he can even see the kid he used to be less than a year ago. He's melted away all his Mythomagic statues.

Sometimes he wonders if Bianca would talk to him if he was the same kid, that same annoying little brother she always took care of before everything went to hell. But he's not. So. He keeps on summoning and he keeps on walking. He knows all of the best places to sleep in a city or in the Underworld, which is kind of weird had it not been out of necessity.

He keeps summoning Bianca, though. Every night, he buries a little bag of French fries and a small cup of strawberry milkshake, and he tries to talk to her, but she never answers him.

And then Percy Jackson shows up and gets him to summon Bianca. And for the first time since he summoned her in December, she talks. And he can't help but still hate Percy a little more for that, for Bianca only speaking to come to his defense, not before.

* * *

><p>The next night, he summons her once more. This time, she doesn't say a word, like normal. He screams at her and he begs and he pleads but she doesn't open her mouth, and <em>why did she talk for Percy and not for me<em>?

He doesn't summon her for nearly six weeks after that. Some nights he finds himself unconsciously buying an extra bag of fries when he's at McDonald's, or starting to order a strawberry milkshake. Still other days he'll find himself burying the food and realize what he's doing right before he finishes covering it with dirt.

Those nights, he tosses and turns, or walks around until he's so tired he's on the verge of forgetting his own name. It sucks. But he can't bring himself to think about how she left him on his own, even in the afterlife.

Finally, in the early fall, he finally snaps, and he summons her. He doesn't even bother to go buy a whole bag of French fries or get a cup of strawberry milkshake – he just tosses half of his sandwich in the ground and calls out, "Bianca di Angelo!" His body still trembles a little with the effort, but ever since the hoard of undead he summoned to fight at Camp Half-Blood, it's been getting easier and easier.

He has so many thing she wants to say to her. He has so many accusations he wants to hurl, and he wants to scream and rage and demand answers from her, but when she shows up – after six weeks of not seeing her – all he can do is just stand there and stare.

Then everything hits him like a wrecking ball to the gut. His face starts to crumple, slowly at first and then he just completely loses it. He starts to cry like the little boy he really is – and he is, he _is_, he's only eleven and why is this happening to him it's not _fair_.

He's not sure how long he says like that, curled up with his knees tucked to his chest and his face buried into his bomber jacket, the one thing he hasn't gotten rid of. A cold chill that he barely notices drifts over his scalp, and he looks up to see Bianca sitting next to him, running a hand through his hair. He's aware of a dull cold through the shirt sleeve on the other side and a stripe of the chilliness across his back, and realizes that her arm's around him. She's barely touching him, but he knows he'd probably get some kind of hypothermia or something if she really did touch him or let her body sweep through his skin.

"Oh, Nico," she says, an airy, soft whisper that seems like they could be part of the wind's breeze. "I'm so sorry. I am so, so sorry." She rests her head against his and whispers other things into his hair, things he can't really hear but knows she's the one saying them.

He sniffles a bit, a rough, snotty sound, and rubs at his eyes with his jacket sleeve. "You waited forty days to talk?" he says, voice throaty like sandpaper. He glares at her a bit accusingly, but it's really not that intimidating through swollen, bloodshot eyes and an equally red nose. He snuffles again, and her hair drifts to his face, running a hand through his hair in a gesture of pushing his bangs out of the way.

"You waited forty days to cry?" she asks him, gently, and he bites his lip and squeezes his eyes against more brimming tears. She curls her pale, not-entirely-solid body around his contrasting one, and they sit together for the rest of the night. In the morning, when he wakes up, she fades away, but this time, it doesn't really hurt so much anymore.

* * *

><p><strong>::fin::<strong>


End file.
